Daily Archives: February 19, 2013

Two things I love happened today. First, I introduced the Doodle 4 Google contest to my students. My 7th and 8th classes cheered. (I am not sure about your 7th and 8th graders – but cheering for a project is not a normal occurrence in my middle school classes.) Second, we brainstormed as a class. Brainstorming

This came across my Twitter feed today, a great video of Steve Dembo’s keynote presentation at AzTEA Unconference. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did! Be sure to tell him you watched and learned by clicking those “Like” and “Tweet” below.

So how was YOUR Valentine’s Day? How was mine, you ask? Considering the fact that I was standing behind the President of the United States of America while he gave a speech, mine was pretty nice. Yep… the entire city of Decatur, Georgia, and City Schools of Decatur- a fantastic public system just outside Atlanta,

College basketball is heating up with March Madness only a few weeks away. For the DEN, March Madness is already here! Here’s the first team! Edmodo Marion Jacob nominates Edmodo. Here is Marion’s description of how she feels about Edmodo and how she uses in with her students. Edmodo is an educational social networking platform that

This is Edie Erickson, STAR Discovery Educator from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She’s going to the DEN Summer Institute July 14-19 in beautiful Burlington, VT. Here’s her DEN story: Tell us yours. The main portion of this year’s application is a short (unedited) video that t ells your DEN story. We want to know about you and

The DEN Team loves sharing. We love sharing things we’ve learned ourselves and things we’ve learned from others. Below are 5 things we think are worth sharing. Will these be brand new to everyone who reads them? Who knows? If they are new, great. If not, perhaps it’s time to reconnect and find a way

I’ve done posts before about using Facebook templates for your students to create engaging and thought-provoking projects. Considering the focus in the Common Core State Standards on characterization, understanding point of view, and writing across genres, this really lends itself well to addressing these concepts. I just wanted to share this NEW Wonderful Free Facebook

If you are a STAR Discovery Educator in the DEN, and you are presenting at a local, regional, state, or national conference, we would like to know about it! The National DEN Leadership is tracking the STARs through a giant telescope called Google! So, if you are a STAR DEN member presenting at a conference

So the first of a series of after-school workshops at our school wrapped up with an amazing example of what can happen when students are given the opportunity to create. The greatest accomplishment of any educational activity is when students become inspired and the learning does not stop at the doors of the school. iMovie

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One of my least favorite trends in education is hatin’ on PowerPoint. Visual presentation in and of itself isn’t the problem! A quick glance of Google search results for “PowerPoint meme” sums up the anti-PowerPoint narrative sweeping the web: PowerPoints can be dreadfully boring, and relying solely on teacher-centered instruction is problematic. That being

Many of you may have realized, to your chagrin, that the Xtranormal site has been shut down as of July 31st. I searched for alternatives and found Digital Films . I have only been playing around with it for a few hours, but have not noticed a feature that allows characters to speak typed text

I pride myself on my lectures. I was voted “Best Lecturer” in the 2013 Sherwood High School yearbook. I’ve been told that my lectures are easily understood, engaging, interactive with plenty of student discourse–and I’m pretty darn funny! My students consistently scored very well on the Advanced Placement U.S. history exam. So what’s the issue? Lecturing works.